Advocacy & Safety - $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund

the Greens Mark Parnell is asking the Rudd government to bring
forward its promised $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund.

Unfortunately hybrids, alternative fuel and diesel vehicles still
emit greenhouse gases. The mining, manufacture and transport of raw
materials, components and finished vehicles also involves
considerable environmental damage.

Green cars do not solve obesity, traffic congestion or road rage.

Wouldn’t $500 million go a long way to kick starting an Australian
cycle industry?

Over a million bikes sell here every year, almost all imported. Five
dollars per bike would be a minimal investment to constructively
employ some of the skilled labour retrenched from the car industry.

I agree that "green" cars of the present and near future aren't all that green. The advantages I see to encouraging (i.e. funding) the development of alternative technologies are (1) current "green" cars are marginally more fuel efficient than the old petrol-burning ICE, and (2) the technologies can be more easily adapted when/if greener energy sources (e.g. solar electricity or cellulosic ethanol) are more widely available.

As to your proposal for redirecting the funding, though, I don't think Australians ride in cages because of a lack of Australian bikes. The way to get people out of cars is to give them convenient alternatives - safe, comprehensive bike networks, frequent, reliable public transportation, etc. Maybe the money would be better spent on projects like this. Although $500M doesn't buy you much of a train system.


the Greens Mark Parnell is asking the Rudd government to bring
forward its promised $500 million Green Car Innovation Fund.

Unfortunately hybrids, alternative fuel and diesel vehicles still
emit greenhouse gases. The mining, manufacture and transport of raw
materials, components and finished vehicles also involves
considerable environmental damage.

Green cars do not solve obesity, traffic congestion or road rage.

Wouldn’t $500 million go a long way to kick starting an Australian
cycle industry?

Over a million bikes sell here every year, almost all imported. Five
dollars per bike would be a minimal investment to constructively
employ some of the skilled labour retrenched from the car industry.

I agree that "green" cars of the present and near future aren't all that green. The advantages I see to encouraging (i.e. funding) the development of alternative technologies are (1) current "green" cars are marginally more fuel efficient than the old petrol-burning ICE, and (2) the technologies can be more easily adapted when/if greener energy sources (e.g. solar electricity or cellulosic ethanol) are more widely available.

Case and point in what bugs me about this "green" cars:


Generally our greenest cars in America get like... 48 city/45 freeway (yay hybrids), alas they had a car in 1992, it was MY car to be exact, with the new fuel saving engine in the VX models, sure it only had 92 horsepower... but got 47/56mpg! I really wanted one of these, but they're hard to find in good condition, they usually had nearly 200k miles on them, well loved vehicles... But what the hell happened to them? Honda even put out a CRX model that got even MORE than that (not the same technology though, it was mainly do to the small engine).

http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/news/2007/05/hybrid_mpg
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/1992-to-1995-honda-civic-4.htm

What happened to our efficient cars? Stop making us pay more for less and a huge heavy PoS battery when we could get more out of a car from 1992 in both power and mileage!

I think i spotted a section on top gear when they were saying about the USA's greenest car was a huge engined suv type thing, it was green because of the material used not the pollution it causes in use. I also heard that the likes of Carol Shelby was on the panel, hang on doesnt he make 6liter gas guzzlers,

You wanna be green cycle its simple. Of course I own a car but hardly ever use it, I would be worried about how much money I would spend if i had to budget for another 200-250 bucks a month for pointless petrol useage.

My super market is around 2k away work is 25k away everything is within cycling distance, plus the weather is pretty good here most of the time so I have no excuses. Actually I find myself making excuses not to drive the car rather than take the bike/......